Chamber proposes new rules for City Hall

S.F. CITY HALL

Supervisor David Chiu smiles as a pedestrian recognizes him on Polk Street.

Supervisor David Chiu smiles as a pedestrian recognizes him on Polk Street.

Photo: Brant Ward / The Chronicle

Chamber proposes new rules for City Hall

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Same-sex marriage, plastic bag bans and universal health care may not have originated in San Francisco, but the city's efforts on those fronts thrust the topics into the national conversation and sometimes changed the law.

Boundary-pushing legislation and pro-labor policies have been two staples of contemporary San Francisco government, but now the city's Chamber of Commerce is proposing efforts that could weaken both.

A plank in the business association's recently released 21-point annual advocacy agenda calls for requiring the city attorney to issue a public opinion on the legality of all proposed ordinances, while another seeks to amend the City Charter to allow city services to be contracted out to small businesses and nonprofits unless a supermajority of the Board of Supervisors rejects the move.

Both proposals are in their early stages, and the chamber has yet to try lining up support on the board. Chamber officials say their efforts are measured, common-sense steps that will save taxpayers money.

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Others, though, warn that they mark a shift in attitude for the business group that could undermine two years of collaboration between business interests, organized labor and others that helped pave the way for an overhaul of the city's business tax and incremental improvement on public employee pension liabilities.

Requiring that City Attorney Dennis Herrera publicly rule on the legality of proposed legislation is particularly troubling in this pioneering city, Chiu said.

"San Francisco has been at our best when we stood up for marriage equality, universal health care, environmental protections and other groundbreaking legislation," he said. "This proposal could have a chilling effect on future innovative policies."

'Not worried'

Jim Lazarus, the chamber's senior vice president for public policy, disputed that.

"I'm not worried," said Lazarus, noting that the chamber supported the plastic bag ban. "The Board of Supervisors is an aggressive legislative body. I don't think this is really going to limit it."

The city attorney already must approve legislation "as to form" - whether it is patently illegal on its face - and often provides confidential memos to lawmakers on the legal risks of their legislation before it is introduced. The chamber's proposal, discussed informally for years, would require those memos to become public if the legislation moves forward, Lazarus said.

"Give people the facts," Lazarus said. "The city attorney represents the city at large, not just individual supervisors."

He cited two examples last year where courts overturned legislation linked to the city - a ban on unsolicited delivery of telephone directories and a requirement that retailers post radiation output from cell phones - as a rationale.

"We told the city attorney we thought that legislation was illegal," Lazarus said. "It went forward, and it was struck down by the courts. That's a cost to the city."

A federal appeals court in September blocked San Francisco from requiring cell phone dealers to tell customers the products may expose them to dangerous levels of radiation, saying the city can't force retailers to pass along messages they dispute.

Similar law overturned

The next month, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also overturned a Seattle ordinance against the unsolicited delivery of Yellow Pages. Chiu, author of San Francisco's similar law, then moved to suspend his legislation, which had been on hold since May because of a separate legal challenge.

But disclosing the city attorney's legal memo on the ordinance would have made little difference, Chiu said, since federal case law at the time supported his legislation.

The legality of the chamber's proposal is unclear. The memos are currently protected by attorney-client privilege. Herrera declined to comment on the chamber's proposal. An August 2009 memo he wrote after The Chronicle obtained a confidential analysis outlining legal advice regarding San Francisco's sanctuary city policy for immigrants noted that confidentiality served two purposes: ensuring that policymakers understand the consequences of their decisions and preserving the city's ability to defend itself in court. Confidentiality prevents the release of memos that adversaries could use as a road map to sue.

But prior to Herrera and his predecessor, Louise Renne, city attorneys regularly issued public opinions, said Lazarus, a deputy city attorney in the 1970s who lost to Herrera in the 2001 election.

A recent chamber poll found that 62 percent of likely voters supported the idea of requiring the city attorney to issue a public opinion on the legality of pending legislation, with 22 percent opposed it.

Strong reaction

The idea of contracting out more city work is anathema to the politically powerful Service Employees International Union Local 1021, the city's largest public employee union. When told of the proposal, one city insider replied, "Oh my. The weather forecast calls for meteors and firestorms."

Labor, through progressive allies on the board's left flank, has repeatedly beaten back efforts in recent years to contract out work, including jail medical services and museum security. The chamber's proposal, which would allow contracting out for any city service to a nonprofit or small business unless eight of the 11 supervisors voted against it, was immediately blasted by the SEIU as a practice that would lead to substandard wages for workers and questionable business practices.

"I would call it selling San Francisco to the lowest bidder," said Larry Bradshaw, vice president of SEIU Local 1021.